Best known for his roles in Jaws and The Sting, the great British actor Robert Shaw was also a renowned author and playwright, a larger than life character, and an alcoholic who died aged 51.
In Robert Shaw: An Actor’s Life on the Set of Jaws and Beyond, his nephew Christopher Shaw Myers presents a vivid family saga in which the man who would be Quint takes centre stage alongside his beloved sister Joanna, their redoubtable mother Doreen, and their tragic father Thomas.
You’d be forgiven for groaning inwardly at that news – isn’t this supposed to be a book about Robert Shaw? – but they’re just as fascinating in their way as Shaw was himself. They’re also integral to understanding him.
Joanna was, like her brother, a left-wing intellectual. She taught English in South Africa and fought against apartheid. Doreen was a no-nonsense force of nature with a sharp sense of humour. Thomas was a charismatic, well-liked man who killed himself after losing everything due to alcoholism. Here lie the tangled roots of Robert Shaw’s personality.
Shaw Myers has inherited his uncle’s flair for writing; the episodic narrative unfolds via reams of imagined yet authentic-sounding dialogue based on seasoned family anecdotes. Shaw comes across as a sometimes difficult and overbearing man who was also charming, gifted and sensitive.
There’s also plenty here for even the most hardcore Jaws fan to enjoy. Highlights include an amusingly awkward lunch with Shaw, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and an unimpressed Doreen, plus the – presumably true? – revelation that Shaw wrote the final draft of his legendary USS Indianapolis speech after receiving champagne-fuelled advice from his friend Thornton Wilder, the esteemed American playwright and novelist.
